Disclaimer: The concept of Slayer's and this variation of Vampire's are Joss's evil work. The story, plot and originality are the author's.
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"Do you wanna see a dead body?"
Though she had interrupted him as if he had not spoken a word, Frank-o felt his hard scowl match her enticing grin. The strange girl wove from foot to foot with dark excitement.
"A dead body? Here in the park?"
She was dressed all Goth, just like him. Another rebel, not giving a fart's feck for park hours or parents' rules. Get tha' homework done, clean the cat box, get back in this house, fer fooks sake! Because those roaring, complacent bastards had formed their impression of him when he was an infant, they could never realize the man he'd now become. But this mystery girl..... yes, moonlight aglow from her thrift-store lace, hands hid shyly behind her waiflike body....
Frank-o knew that she understood. She stood thin, demure but unafraid. Excited, he knew that this beauty wouldn't hesitate to sing secret songs, to discover dark dances, roaming freely wherever they chose. Parents! How did those dimwits expect a young man to spend these formative years learning about the world, when they held him back from seeing the majority of it? It was like asking Bauhaus to record a classic album, but demanding that they use only a tuba and feckin' kazoo. Frank-o stared hard, and knew there would be no taboo between the two of them. Kindred. Black lipstick stretched her coy grin from raven curls to raven curls, as she swayed nodding. He played his roll out.
"Yeah, I'm keen to see a dead body. I'm game!"
Her long grin broke open, even teeth all aglow. Gracefully, she lifted her clasped hands from behind her, stopping Frank-o's heart. She aimed the .44 not at him, this lost waif who needed no protection, but at her own elfin ear.
"A dead body, right here in the park!" she cried, and yanked the trigger.
Frank-o jumped off his feet. And after that, he was not sure whether he passed cold out or whether the black woodlands, pressing in so close around him, came alive and pinned him down.
* * *
Molly
"Hey...he's alive!"
Karen was lifting the kid's head, slapping his slack cheeks until the pupils rolled down and the dead blue eyes strained to focus. The grandmother pulled him into her bosom and held him tight.
Other voices rejoiced at finding survivors. "How many...three? Four?"
"More over here!" Lar's baritone rejoiced, then bottomed out like gravel. "No- they're dead, these ones-"
The gang had had been lucky, bursting in. Molly stepped to the center of the room and took charge. "The back hallway- Hammer, Alan, Amigo! At least two of them fled down that way- be ready to meet them. They'll be back with coats, and maybe friends! Barry- Father Miles-"
As Molly'd feared- no sooner had Alan and Amigo blocked the doorway, a hard, tackling rush knocked them clear back into the room. Adam and Dee staggered in shock, arms covering their heads. Molly shouted for them to stand and support, and flung herself into the fight.
A flying kick, straight out of Tai Kwon Do class, knocked the first creep off of Amigo. The yellow raincoats were everywhere; she blocked a punk-studded punch, swiftly rotated the arm and the rigid-muscled body that had thrown it, twisting Billy Idol off balance. "Father Miles!" she cried, lashing a boot into the punk's hip and propelling him toward the priest. But a full sprinkler of water, straight to the torso, rolled clean off the rainjacket. Howling, the figure bowled straight over the priest and burst out the front door.
"Damn! One's escaped!"
Amigo was back up, and the way his fists matched the speed of the thug's showed that Adam and Dee had overcome their initial reactions. Molly dipped and caught the ankle of another as it rushed past, hurling it high as it made to follow the punk who'd escaped. She turned to meet another raincoat as it lurched from the hallway, a limp human form over its shoulder. With a one-two, she burst its nose and jaw, knocking the captive from its grip. Grabbing handfuls of rubber, she judo-tossed the stunned fecker. Stripped of its coat, it landed at Sean-o's feet just in time to scream its last. A glance confirmed, Sean-o was among the swiftest with the sprinkler. Molly yelped a joyous cry.
Pain struck as dancing stars replaced the room. Molly fell like a grocery jar of pickled cabbage, and the victory cry that answered her own was a bestial thing.
Helpless from the ground, she watched a giant- muscles bulging, hair like burning tar- leap over her and bat Alan like a hurlee. Meagan, unguarded, dropped her arms as prayer froze upon pale lips. Dizzy and numb, Molly could move only inches. In the distance, the yellow-coated savage leered over the schoolgirl, snarling to blaze terror into her Meagan's timid blue eyes. It snatched her into its grip and hefted her aloft by her throat.
It growled again, louder.
Molly staggered to her knees, but too late. Lar- Amigo- Barry- none of them could reach Meagan in time. A shriek of protest was overwhelmed by a growled laugh of dark delight. And then- up from the ground- limped Father Miles. Single-handed, the slight, arthritic missionary swung the incense censer with all his might. The device clanged from the brute's shoulder, exploding into flames and smoke. The savage laughter became howls of fury: Meagan was cast aside like a crisp bag. Father Miles did not back down.
"Refik!" screamed a truly dread one, turned in the doorway. Molly, weaving on her feet, watched the monstrous face writhe from delight to hatred.
"Another time, damned ones- I will add you to my coven!"
And in an eye's blink, he flew like a wasp across the room and out through the door.
Karen pulled her head back inside the window. "Six! I counted six, disappearing around the corner. Shite!"
Molly struggled to count. "What was it here- five, maybe six iced when we first battered in? Then how many, when they'd donned their raincoats and made a rush for the door?"
"Just the one," Sean-o announced, kicking the coat that Molly'd pulled free.
"Six, then, in total-"
Father Miles and Lar were bent over Meagan, giving aloud prayer of thanks that she had not been injured by the giant who had taken her. Molly added the briefest thanks of her own: there was no time for any more. "With Meagan intact, we didn't lose a one. Thank God! Six of them beaten and not a hair harmed, ourselves!"
"Better than that- four innocents rescued!" rejoiced Karen. She cradled one of them like a lost lamb. "Three whose souls are spared, from the door of death itself!"
"Dammit, though- six escaped! That means this nest is still intact- and will be on the attack, before morning, to bring its numbers back up!" Amigo's knucklebones popped loudly as he punched a frustrated hole in the plasterboard.
"There's no gain in that, now, Amigo- we need you whole!" Molly tried to collect the whirlwind of thoughts in her throbbing head. "They move far too quickly for us to follow- if only we knew where they'll be going, to head them off there! But, dammit, who was that giant they had with them? I never even saw it coming, what he lumped me!"
It was a quavering voice, from the floor, that provided their answer. "That son of a bitch is named Refik- and I am going to stake his feckin' ass, sure-!"
* * *
Frank-o
"Aren't you going to say it?" the wrinkly old one, Karen, grinned reassuringly at him. "'Sweet Jesus, that thing looked just like a-'"
"Vampire. Yih, I know."
Karen frowned. "Usually witnesses can't believe. 'There's no such thing,' they all say."
Frank-o pulled away, shook his ringing head. "Only stupid people say that. I've got that Bloodletting album, Concrete Blonde. I know that shite's real. Those who know where to look and how to listen know all about the truth."
"Listen," said the good-looking one, the one acting like the leader. "I'm glad you're with it. It's saving us time, and time is what's precious at the moment. You've got to tell us what you know, now, what you heard or saw while you were a captive. We need to know where this nest would go to hunt!"
Frank-o hid behind his rain of black locks, desperately cradling his splitting head. "Jaysus, someone slugged me one, in that fight. I can't hardly think- can't remember jack-"
"Please try, my son-"
The last thing Frank-o wanted to see was a high-and-mighty priest. He had seen too feckin' much of that, back before the Christian Brothers had kicked his ass out into the community school. But this other one, Karen, rubbed his sore temples, and Frank-o knew he had the attention of this good-looking Molly and all the rest.
"I'll try. It's all a blur, me feckin' head-"
He told this crowd how he had been grabbed in Fairview Park, told them every detail. Even with his head splitting, he recollected that nasty incident by heart, oh yes. He knew this place, this old flat in Rathfarnham. Other scenes came in flashes, and that's how he described them.
Mainly, it was that terrifying bastard Refik that he described. He saw the gang exchange worry for worry. "... I remember this one time- don't know where we were, but I remember his ugly gob as he was laughing about it- saying how fitting it was, 'drinking' at the bleeding horse- so, I dunno, maybe one of those studs farms out in the sticks of County Kildare-"
"The Bleeding Horse," interrupted some blond toothpick. "Huge place, on Camden Street."
Everyone nodded knowingly, and Molly whipped out a tiny cordless phone.
"No- wait!" Frank-o resumed. "Listen- before you do anything else.... There's something you need to know about Refik. Something- there's something different about him, something dangerous....What is it? Oh, me feckin' head-!"
"Hammer! Alan!" this Molly girl directed, dialing with one deft hand. "You, Karen and Pamela perform the exorcism so no raincoats can return here, and then get those three captives to the safehouse!
"Aisling, it's me- praise God!" she announced as the far end answered. "We need you and New Zealand to get the Hiace van over here, and quick. We've got a long shot, but need to jump on it- fast!"
* * *
Ais (pronounced Ash)
"Look at her tits!" This Frank-o pointed and laughed. The van careered through a roundabout, tires shrieking. "Damn! I like the way you lot hunt vampires!"
"It's Holy Water," Aisling explained. "When someone is bitten by one of these creeps, they're going to turn into one, like it or not. That's the rules. A body that's doused in Holy Water means we'll vanish just as soon as we change, if the worst happens to you or me. No need for one of our friends to risk their life, fighting us."
"Still seems funny to me. Wet tee-shirt contest! Damn! Molly- Hey, Molly, you could use those as weapons- distract the bastard long enough to stake 'em!"
Ais knew that ultra-polite nose Molly put on when she was not amused. "Wooden stakes are a myth. So's most of the stuff you see on telly. The way to do it in real life is to rip the coats off them so that they can get a good dousing."
"That's Bible-thumping bullshite," the black-clad youth protested. His limbs twitched as if he was on some nasty amphetamines, or being stung by a dozen little bees. "There's nothing 'holy'- there's just death, and there's life."
"You're sure?" Ais offered. "Believe your eyes, Frank-o. They are creatures of evil. They can't exist in contact with anything holy any more than darkness can exist when a light's turned on."
"Well, you ain't squirting that stuff on me-!"
"If you don't believe, it wouldn't do you any good anyway." Aisling frowned, rebuffed, and hoped that she had not offended him. She didn't want to be insensitive: the lad had just been rescued from a horrifying ordeal.
The Goth just howled with glee as the van shrieked across another roundabout and raced on toward city centre. Ais knew that people reacted in different ways, to terror. She'd been fifteen, when she'd learned what those bumps in the night meant. Everything happens for a reason, Aisling reminded herself. Pretty soon, I hope, he'll calm down and it'll be revealed, what God had planned for him.
"Oh! The search finished its analysis, guys- guys!"
"Go ahead, Ais," reassured Father Miles, gripping the handhold for dear life. New Zealand drove like a maniac.
"No mention of a 'Refik,' though there is a 'Refiki.' But, he he, that was just the cute little marmot from The Lion King, so I don't think that's what we're after."
"Fucker fought like an animal," swore little Meagan, clutching her bruised windpipe. "Oh- sorry, Father."
"That leaves us with you," Molly announced, addressing the rescued lad. She stared until his nervous laughter withered. "Frank-o- I know you can't remember much, but you're the only one who's seen these bastards."
Molly did not apologize to Father Miles.
"Frank-o- we need you to be out eyes. We're going down Camden Street," Molly announced, "and we need you to point them out to us if they are there."
Ais gave Frank-o a chaste little squeeze as he nodded assent.
The van raced northward over pavements suddenly slick with a nighttime shower.
* * *
Frank-o
Every living mother feckin' bastard one of them, out on the street, was wearing a coat or yellow slicker. Dublin's gutters poured with it. It was pain to lift his face to the sting of the sudden storm.
"If they're here," Molly shouted at him again. "You need to find them for us!"
Frank ducked his head from the weight of responsibility as well as pelting rain.
"The usual thing?" asked Sean-o. When Molly nodded, he tossed the duffel bag to her waiting catch. She passed neon-yellow waistcoats to the redhead mouse, that migraine priest, the dumb jock, and the rest. One was pressed into his hands. Three punks, drinkin' a two-litre of cider through straws in the alley, gazed pure scorn at them.
"No way," Frank-o stood his ground. "I'm not wearing one of those."
"Hey!" kickboxer chick demanded. "These vests get us where we're going, allow us to do what we do!"
"I wear black, and I wear it for a reason." Frank-o had taken enough shit for his stance at school. He was well versed, knew this fight well and how to wage it. Besides, he thought, it'd earn her respect, making a stand.
"Fuck 'im. We'll be in and out, to that cloakroom, inside five minutes." The bitch doled vests out to everyone but him. Over her shoulder, she dictated: "New Zealand- you mind Robert Smith, here, 'til we know fer certain whether any yellow coats be hauntin' this pub.
"Gang-" she ordered, "let's give this Bleedin' Horse a vampectomy!"
Frank-o stood by the van like loser as the gang bullied the bouncers- "Fire Wardens! Let us through! Fire Wardens!" And with a wave of some badge, they'd skipped the queue and were gone, through the doors.
Those cider-sucking fuckers in the alley were still laughing it up. Dumb bastards: that had been a smart ploy. Frank-o felt like kicking their thick heads off their spotty necks.
"It's like a street gang," the reserved kiwi observed. "All wearing the same colours. 'We're the Fire Wardens! Make way! We go where we want!'"
Frank-o lounged as casually as he could, stung by swift rain. The storm ran strings of water off his long shielding curls.
The gang did not return.
"Listen," Frank-o finally trusted this witty, silent stranger who drove like bonkers. "That crowd inside wouldn't be their style. Wouldn't be--- Refik's. If they're out here hunting, they're down the side streets just off of here. The place where some scumbag'd go to stick his lad inta a hoor he'd picked up, at the pub. Place where some slapper'd pass on the feckin' crabs.
"Less passersby. Less people passing by, do you know what I'm saying?"
The guy they called New Zealand nodded once.
"And if we're going to catch those feckers, it's right now."
It may have been a shrug he did, or maybe a glance at the calm bully bouncers at the Bleeding Horse door. But New Zealand, the moment later, opened the door of the Hiace and emerged with a sprinkler and a pot.
In the face of the stinging rain, Frank-o launched off north. The sidewalk was full of bright, laughing imbeciles. Oblivious nine-to-fiver sellouts, grabbed their raincoats and went out on the tear. Get themselves drunk and then, on some slave-labour silk sheets, royally screwed. Vampire bait, the stupid lot of them. Feck 'em 'til their bloodshot eyes roll up into their thick heads.
The kiwi struggling to match his pace, Frank-o examined a hundred yards of dumb innocents as the rain whirled against shuttered charity shops and Scandinavian furniture showrooms. Then he stopped and stared, just off the main drag. There, yellow slicker over the same ratty bridesmaid's dress she'd been buried in, Sophie bait laid.
The too-wide grin, from wet locks to mess of black locks, greeted him.
"Frank-o" she whispered, her voice like horsehair brushes. "How's yer father?"
With a grip of fire he took the waif by the windpipe and dropped, spinning. Her skull bashed the brickwork with a rage enough to stun the fight out of any potential rape victim. Frank-o, in close, snarled into her ear, all words abandoned for sheer anger.
The girl, Sophie, sent spasms that literally chill the length of Frank-o's spine. An unremembered part of him recognized this woman-creature's laugh.
He was whipped, swiftly slammed against the wall. Air left him. A menacing male growl shook the dark lane- a bodyguard, that Frank-o hadn't even noticed, stood close!- and then there rolled up along his neck a delicate purr.
Sophie was laughing again.
"I took you once, you stupid boy- did you doubt I could take you again?" She laughed, bent too close inside his guard even to see. "I could take you anytime I wished, you silly, superficial boy..."
"Where is that bastard, Refik?" Frank-o demanded in as many gasps, defiant to the last.
Sophie laughed. "Never were afraid, you---- never learned any fear, all your mortal years...! I always did find you sexy, in your stupid, austere, vulnerable way...."
The giggles sent spasms through him.
"Tell me, you- !"
"So upset-! Tsk, tsk!" A chill, sensual lick tasted his cold sweat. "As if it would matter any to you, Refik's hunting ruggers up by the Huguenot Cemetery-"
* * *
New Zealand
The decanter upturned. The splash and fury lent tribute to the storm, itself.
New Zealand reflected: TV and movies, all lies. There was no last dramatic moment, no explosion of prop-department blood and reverse-scuba sound effect.
The black-clad youth simply curled, huddled though suddenly alone, low against the brick wall. New Zealand offered his hand.
"Wh-wh-w...."
"Neither saw me," New Zealand explained. The raincoats had been too intent on reclaiming their escaped prize. It had been no heroism to douse first the bodyguard, then the Goth chick, with Father Miles' blessings.
New Zealand conjectured, rain running through the shaggy spikes of his dyed hair, exactly what this kid beside him was thinking. Perhaps a soul unused to gratitude was searching for words of thanks. Or maybe, New Zealand mused, cynical youth was struggling with belief in the undeniable existence of God's true grace.
It was a bizarre vision.
Maybe raincoats did burst into a noxious dust that seized the lungs.
* * *
Frank-o
That earthy bird, spying the pair of them staggering back down Camden, waved her arms surprisingly little when jumping to get their attention. Frank-o thought she was a lesbian. And not the sexy, exciting sort of lesbian, like that time behind Grogan's when they'd given Eithne and Nuala all the cider and heavy black eye liner and dared them into tongue-kissing each other. No, Wooly-Jumper here looked like a commune hippie who thought herself a shit-cool environmentalist, but was in truth just an unwashed dyke living on carrotbread out in some poxy field.
She wouldn't have anything to say that Frank-o, after outliving two vampires, would find important.
"Oh, Gee!" Boyney-babe was exclaiming, splashing through the puddles toward them. "I came out of the pub and didn't know where the two of you were! I was so afraid!"
This New Zealand shrugged to indicate that they were fine. The earthy bird continued:
"Molly says there are at least a dozen yellow raincoats in the pub's cloakroom- she thinks that they're in there, coatless and ripe for the spraying!"
"They're by the Huguenot cemetery," the kiwi corrected. "You two hang here- I'll grab the others, inside."
The rain eased and Frank-o could lift his head. Awkward, she was smiling apologetically.
"Must have been bad, when the raincoats had you," was the lesbian's lame, eventual attempt to make conversation.
It had been Elisabeth McHugh's idea, that time behind Grogan's. The wicked bitch! This other night, too, this one hoor had stopped her dented little Ford to holler at them. As the rude hoor'd burnt rubber, McHugh watched with those mismatched eyes. Then she got them all running back behind the center, where the yuppie'd parked her car. The hoor was off buying a food processor or cold cream or some materialistic thing that she actually believed would bring meaning to her miserable conformist life. Surprising, for a packed shopping centre, no one had been around: they'd all swooped down the embankment and all over the tiny car. It was another surprise, how easy a Ford flips over. McHugh shouted and everyone started spinning it like a merry go round; and like a merry go round, they all howled with laughter.
But the laugher died in one fell swoop, like the swinging of a scythe. As the car came around, each saw in turn the little bloody nose pressed up against the window. The woman had left her baby in the car when she'd run into the store for just a minute.
Frank-o remembered studying first her brown left eye and then her right green one, searching those oddball eyes after everybody but the two of them had scattered. Elizabeth McHugh had shown no reaction whatsoever.
"He he," Boyney-babe lesbian coughed, killing time until the others arrived. "So.... Do you go to church often, Frank-o?"
* * *
Sean-o
"Way-hey! Dusted two of them!" Sean-o offered New Zealand a high-five once, and then twice. The stony faced kiwi accepted them in turn with a depreciative shrug. "That's some pretty slick shootin' there, sheriff!"
Molly and Ais cracked up at his antics. The Padre, Lar and the others grinned. Tension relief was good. Very important. Not everyone laughed, though: Boyney seemed really shook up, right now. It had been a rough night, and there was more work yet to do.
"Molly-" he intimated. "There's still four of them out there-"
She became action. Damn, Sean-o had to admit, she was good. "Right! New Zealand- great work, rev up the van. Ais! Ring up Colm. Check the database. Rough spots around Baggot Street: what holes would lowlife duck into?" She already had them moving. "Frank-o! Rap with me for a mo-"
Sean-o fell into step a pace behind the two. He could overhear their conversation. "Frank-o- nice work with the raincoats-"
"Danger is my logo."
"Cute. Song lyric?"
"Yeah."
Judging from his butt, Frank-o sure fancied himself, Sean-o thought. Or fancied he had a chance with Molly.
"Listen up, Frank-o: you're reacting to the whole situation like a pro. The others we rescued, at that flat, they're in shock over the whole thing. We wouldn't have a next step, now, if not for you. But there's something you've got to realize about these creeps."
"Go on."
Molly's body language told Sean-o that she didn't need his permission. "When there's danger, they scatter. If just one of them escapes, they can hunt victims and form a whole new band. Going off alone is their way. Us- we need a whole crew to fight them. We need someone to trade fists, rip off their coats. We need several people to stand praying, in support. We need someone who's ducking about, ready to douse them. Sticking together is our way. It takes us all, to do it right and stay safe. You can't just run off again, like you did earlier."
"'Stand praying?' Come on- this is life and death-"
The Hiace squealed to a halt, side door already flying open. Molly, all business, turned to the Padre. "Father Miles- the scripture. New Zealand- keep it slow! They probably don't recognize our ride. Play curb crawler and we've got a shot at jumping them!"
The Padre quoted, piling into the van. "'As long as Moses held up his arms, the Israelite armies won, but when he put his arms down, the Amalekites started winning.... Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Write down an account of this victory, so that it will be remembered.'- Exodus 17, verses 11 to 14.
"It goes back that far, you see. What some theologists take as a foreshadowing of Christ's posture at crucifixion is actually something much simpler: instructions for receiving strength in the battle against the enemies of the Divine."
"That's bullshit," Frank-o exploded. Sean-o wondered if the Goth rocker seemed to have some grudge against the priest. Probably, he was just pissed that Molly had offloaded him onto the old Padre. "You make people just stand around with their arms out, when they need to be defending themselves with those fists? That's stupid."
"It saved your life, back at Rathfarnham," Sean-o butted in.
"Sorry for butting in," Sean-o said, in receipt of dirty looks from the both of them.
"Sean-o here, for instance-" the Padre indicated, in the close quarters of the van. "Our enemies have the strength of Biblical demons. And, by their nature, these evil shades that walk upon our earth are extremely difficult to harm, by our physical means. Yet our Sean-o, here, with Lar, Dee and Adam standing in prayer for support, can grapple with them, exchanging quite exciting fisticuffs and withstanding their hellish strength." Frank-o looked grudgingly impressed.
"True, the healthy physique he has grown from working on the building sites has proved impressive to more than one of the young ladies in our group, in one episode or another," the Padre continued. "But he is by no means a Charles Atlas, so to speak."
Minding the old reverend, Frank-o actually cracked a smirk. Sean-o reflected, tension relief is good.
He slapped himself repeatedly on the forehead for twenty slapstick seconds. "You know, Padre Milo- what can I say? Gee, thanks!"
Frank-o
"How long were you held captive, Francis? Is there any body you would like to call, to let them know you're alright?" the collared hypocrite asked. "Here- take this-"
Frank-o had a miniature phone pressed into his hands. It was ringing as he lifted it to his ear, and then a tiny voice inquired what party he wished the number of. The voice repeated itself, and then a third time. Fire suddenly within him, Frank-o spoke the name and then let the voice connect him for an additional charge of 55p.
Father Miles gave Frank-o his old man's smile as the phone rang.
"Hello?"
Frank-o confined himself to a late-night whisper. "You crazy babe, Bathsheba- I wantcha!"
"Who is this?" suddenly awake now, a voice Frank-o knew well, jolted awake.
"You're suf-fo-cating, you need- a good shake-!"
"Chanting Doolittle at me- who is this?!"
"I'm tired of living, Sheba, so gimme-"
The bitch swore, frightened, as frightened as the yuppies they'd tried to shake out of their false cocoons. Frank-o sent a wicked laugh down the line.
"Who is this?!"
"Who do you think it is?"
There was a silence, as if she were too afraid to speak aloud. And then, breath enough caught for a whisper: "Francis O'Shea? Frank-o?"
He gave his own signature laugh again. "I remember all about the baby behind the shopping center, McHugh. You killed that woman's baby-"
"The baby was alright! Paper, next day, said all about it! No one hurt the baby!"
"It's not forgot, McHugh. You never got your due, your wicked ways-!"
There was commotion coming down the line, now. Frank-o heard her protesting, anger in the background. Figures she's have some man with her, the slut. Some fully-grown fucker, from the sound of it. Frank-o chuckled to himself.
"I'm coming for you, McHugh. Got me a posse of my own, now, a posse that descends divine wrath itself upon the evildoers! We're going to track you down and sort your shit out. We're-"
"No one hurts the baby! You stay away, whatever creep you-"
Frank-o laughed aloud at her panic. Served the bitch right. He'd pay here a visit, of course, the next day or so, and razz at how he'd scared her cold self over the edge, this night. He started chanting the lyrics again: "We're apin' rapin' tapin' – catharsis - you get torn down and I get –erected - my blood is working but my, my heart is-!"
"I know this isn't Frank-o- he disappeared! So just feck off, ya bastard!"
It was just a bit of fun. Frank-o was laughing before and after she slammed her receiver down. Yeah, he was looking forward to staring into old Elizabeth McHugh's wide, mismatched eyes once again. He turned to hand the tiny telephone back to the despicable old priest, and found the whole van staring at him.
"What?" he challenged. Dry shites, the misguided conservative lot of them.
* * *
Father Miles
Saint Christopher surely miffed, depreciated from his lofty post. The travelers cruised the Georgian streets without supernatural guidance to their goal. Father Miles prayed silently, though concern crowded his attentions. The rain gradually stopped.
"There!" cried Molly at last. "That's the one who called to Refik from the doorway, when Refik had Meagan by the throat!"
By the maternity hospital, a mess of Caribbean dreadlocks down a broad, yellow back disappeared around the corner. New Zealand killed the lights and coasted silently, after.
"That's him alright," the rescued lad affirmed, recollection rising in his voice. "Jacko, they called that one. Has teeth like a Halloween lantern!"
"Sean-o, get ready. New Zealand- you know what to do-"
Father Miles' chest grew tight, and he remembered to exhale. Oblivious, this Jacko stepped from between two parked cars and crossed halfway Holles Street. At the last second he glanced, and the raincoat's face filled with hate as he saw the Hiace looming upon him. Quick as the snakes Father Miles had seen in Central America, the figure darted back toward the safety of the path. But their excellent driver had anticipated this, swinging the wheel and gunning the motor. The van jarred to a halt, the ugly crunch of crushed metal aggressive and loud at this late, quiet hour.
Though he neared sixty-eight years of age, Father Miles managed to pile out the rear door almost as quickly as the young warriors of his team. The struggling figure was still captured, legs crushed between the two parked cars, as Sean-o approached.
Tearing great gashes off itself, the demon foe had almost pulled free. Father Miles lifted his arms in prayer as a cry: "Refik- Razor- help me, you ignorant pillocks!" resounded from the flat faces of the Georgian houses. Molly and Lar slid across the crumpled boot of cars fore and aft to cut the creature off, if it broke free. Thank God, there was no need: Sean-o doused the straining captive proper, and then there was nothing spectacular beneath the streetlights but a roadside collision, three damaged cars.
"Excellent work, brave Sean-o!" Miles croaked. His breath was going, his voice betrayed. Sean-o gave him a salute.
Molly, bless her, was quick as ever to assert direction. "Is anyone hurt, from the crash? Sound off!"
"Everyone is safe, but Helsing's out of action," the New Zealander answered.
"Helsing?" the rescued young lad, Francis, inquired with the scowl Father Miles was beginning to see as customary. "Who the hell is Helsing?"
"It's... the van's name. 'Hiace Van Helsing,' we call it," Father Miles explained, to demonstrate that his breathing had returned to normal, that his voice was full strength.
Sean-o gave the black-clad teen a nudge, thanks be for the support. "Pretty clever, huh? Van Helsing, helping us fight vampires?"
Francis aimed a sour face at him, Father Miles, but this melted in giggles as he turned toward his young peer. "He he," he laughed, chuckle sounding much more like a healthy kid that the hyena call they had all heard, on the way over. "Yeah, that is cool."
"Bumpers are locked. We're on foot, from here on," New Zealand called.
Father Miles was worried about Francis. True, the human soul reacted to the undeniable proximity of demonic evil in many an ill way. Sean-o himself, now among the strongest of team members, had revolted against all who tried to help him, when he had first been saved. Lar and Meagan, who had lost their sister, sank into such a crisis of faith that Father Miles still remembered them in his prayers of thanksgiving. But this Francis- he reacted hardly at all to the reality of physical evil. It was no shock, to him. What had the child witnessed, that caused him such intimacy with evil, at such a young age?
What made Francis hold such ill feeling toward him as a priest, as well?
Father Miles bowed his head in shame and in sadness. He himself had not upheld God's most high standards. The loss of his flock and then the very parish that held them still burned as a pain. The Bishop had acted correctly, it was true. The bottle, more loved than the mumbling, unconscious faces that gathered before his altar the odd Sunday. The bishop was right in his case, to remove him before he caused further distance between God and his people. And, Father Miles recognized with familiar flaring anger, he himself had done far less damage than some of his brothers in the service, men whose hearts had been wickedly corrupted and whose deeds glared as reprehensible as those of the demonic foes he now battled.
Father Miles rejoiced for his present, strange ministry: he battled with all of his power to redeem himself for the poor parishioners he had disappointed or hurt. Passion rising within him, the priest swore that if a man of the cloth had once failed young Francis, he himself would do everything in his power to-
Miles let out a startled gasp as a noose of arms crushed him from behind. The world went dizzy, and he recognized the screams of his friends and the fact that he had been lifted off the path. In his reminiscence, he had wandered near a darkened alley beside the hospital- Molly's and Ais's voices were calling his name as a hardness like razor's steel brushed his neck.
* * *
Frank-o
Frank-o whipped the hair out of his eyes, turning. He saw the burly arms bear-hug the wheezy old priest, snatching him hard backwards into the shadow of the alley.
Fuck! Jacko had been screaming out for other vamps, when they iced him. Why hadn't anyone realized that these might be within earshot, hiding just down a nearby lane? Frank-o sprinted headlong into the laneway, fists curled into balls as tight as the hate and anger in his chest. Devil have pity on Refik, when he reached him-!
Molly was right beside him. The hoor was warning him back! Frank-o had just a half-second's thought: what, some girl thinks she can fight better than me? He'd knocked McHugh nearly senseless, before the cruel, cheating hoor'd maced him in the eyes.
But then unholy screams were blasting down the laneway. In the dim light, Frank-o saw the red-nosed hospicehead tumble, face-first, to the cement. A huge figure- no name springing to mind for this monster- towered, waving stumps of arms. Its bellows deafened them as it turned to flee. Dim figures dodged and fluttered, bats on amphetamines, vanishing into deeper blackness.
Frank-o stood, sugarfoot stance, ready to knock the fangs out of any bastard who reconsidered and charged to face them. Behind him, the chick and her mates gathered over the old collection-plate licker. "Thank God!" someone was crying, over and over.
Frank-o knew it was not an empty exclamation. He shook, he was surprised to find, from the adrenaline in him.
"The holy water!" the funny feller, Sean-o exclaimed. "He grabbed you, your shirt is wringing with holy water-"
"Thank God!" exalted the old man, his loud voice quivering from age or maybe shock. "Thank Him for His mercy, that I may serve him another day!"
That Molly was one fine-looking bird, but her lack of regard edged on unforgivable. "Alright, everybody, we're looking for a huge son of a bitch without any hands!" Then she started ordering him and everyone around again, up on her high horse, like she was some Assistant Manager at McDonalds.
Frank-o really hated people who thought they had some natural superiority. "Cut your hair, clean that black shite off your nails, if you think you're going to be working here. Who do you think you are?" And the fecker would smoke a big fat doob or fuck his dog in half a heartbeat, if he thought no other pretentious git would find out about it. The entire world was full of yuppie pricks like that.
* * *
Sledgehammer
Yeah, so I'm an Englishman living in Dublin. What of it? Any blokie who gets in my face about the ring tone playing God Save the Queen, I bust his head. I have GSTQ tattooed across one set of knuckles, daring anyone to step up and try it on. Got 1066 across the other: that's the last time anyone dared, on us. We brew Guinness in London, too, you know.
The moby went off, it was Molly. Good girl, that. Admire her ability. Said, get yourself and the others down to Mount Street, by the hospital there. "Roight," I answered her. The lot were done with their mumbo jumbo. Dominos and biscuits, all that RC shite. It keeps them lot kicking.
Lancashire. Beautiful place. I used to fancy myself a rapper, when I was a young lad and got my ink done. Never been a rap star from Lancashire.
Blackburn, groovy, checkin' out the boobies-
Sledgehammer cruisin' for the birdies all day.
New York? Newbies! Chumps who rue me!
At Lancs we invented urban decay!
Poetry, that.
I came to beat the shit out of this guy, and wound him helping him up to his flat. He'd been ripped, whole back torn open and blood an awful mess. Still had the strength to fight them off, what. After all they'd done to him. Bold fucker, I can see why Dorry shagged him despite his lack of any rhyming talent.
"Hammer," he winced, the Paddy chump. And then his eyes popped and bags sank into his face like a body dug up after years for some police cold case. He lashed his fist across my ear, like I'd just poured him a shot of Dettol and he had to pay me back before dropping dead. And after all that Paddy'd been through that night, he fought like Lennox Lewis. "Hammer!" he said again, this time a hiss. I still hear the way me made an evil hiss of my name, like he was claiming me. I survived that fight because the sun eventually came pouring through the window.
Yeah, I took that tag in my rhyming days. Now, it's literal. I take one in each hand and can be through a door in five, ten seconds. Most blokes are still standing there, their cocks in the hands, after just ten seconds. Doorchains, deadbolts, child's play. Don't mean a thing. We're in, where we need to be. Get the job done and then we're out.
So I got Alan, Pamela, the lot, in the back of the Vauxhaul and we tear down to Mount Street. The gangs's all there, all standing around Miles except Boyney, still shaking in the back of Van Helsing. And that new kid, the Sisters of Mercy reject. Scowling down the alley like his Curehead ass was a one-man army, he was. And Molly asks if we're game to follow a trail of blood. "Yeah, I'm game," I light up a fag and then say. The cops roll up because of the van crash and I take my eight-pounder and bash in one, two of their headlights. The cops peel out like right tossers. Molly gives me this Oh, Hammer-! look that makes me pity the fact that she's too young for me. "Come on, let's go," I say. They fall in behind.
The alley is dirty and dark but empty. I'm singing, Yobs with the Glock/think they're Dirk Diggler's cock/But not me 'cause I walk- wit' the Higher Power!, mood music like. Light from our torches showed the raincoated fucks had turned back toward Mount Street, not down toward Grand Canal. There's some right bastards down Grand Canal: I for one was proper cheerful that events did not lead that way. Rough sorts.
No, the blood leads us right down to Mount Street and across to Vershoyle. Right rough corpo estate, that, too. Behind a tits-up club called Danse Macabre. We're well down the court before it hits me: there's far too many people standing outside that pub, arguing, this long past closing time. Dozens of them, all agitated, screaming "No- it was Charlie Haughey! It was the Boss who came through!" –"No," some other inner-city prick cries back, "Tha' was Bono hisself! Dressed as MacPhisto with devil horns- he said we should- he said to!!" An angry mob, they shift off the sidewalk, bits of board and brick in their dirty hands. Arguing about who had run through and commanded them, they came at us.
Molly just had time enough to put a buzz in my ear. You see that tall ugly fuck down the end of the court, laughing at us? I never knew any one of them that had a power to do this!
She was right, too. He was one ugly fuck.
So we start bashing heads and kicking out kneecaps. Poor scummers. They didn't even know what they were doing, or why. There's good and evil, in every man: this was the evil side of these corpo folk, awakened and brought to the very fore. Me, I feel pure white power flowing through me. I had the beats rhyming, hammers swinging, and the crazed mob was falling like a hard northern rain.
I caught a glimpse of the hard fuck, the raincoat down the end of the court. He was the very image of vexation. Never underestimate the power, what.
Lar and Alan got a whack upside the snot, but we were moving steadily through. King-fu Molly was lumping skulls like an old trouble n' strife with a rolling pin. I saw Sean-o, holding his own. That new kid, Frank-o, the throwback to the Goth-rock 80's, he was a bit of all right. Must have kicked some asses in his time, what. Three other raincoats turn and run, down toward the canal. The one with a look like hot asphalt, he and no-hands duck into a flat down the end of the court and slam goes the door.
Behind us, there moans a long pile of bruised and battered. We knock flat the last of them and reach the black door. Oh yes: my expertise. The eight clatters to the cobbles as I tighten my gloves. I slick back my hair and take the ten-pounder, solid, in two tight fists. "Stand back, love-" and Molly gives me that look of hers that knocks me out. Knocks me flat as that black door, one swift shot. There wails this hellish shriek like a Clapton guitar, and in we go.
* * *
Frank-o
"There's three, run down the street! They're getting away!"
"Listen-" Molly coldly declared, the pushy bitch. "Like I said earlier: we fight as a team. With Lar and Colm down, and Boyney adiosing the van, we're going to need every man we've got! Aisling and New Zealand are even pulled in, lending support!"
"The bastards've already multiplied! There's ones among them- huge fellers- that weren't there, this sunset!"
But she wasn't even listening to him. She was following that hard-case English fecker into the flat, as if Frank-o didn't know more about this nest than any man alive. McHugh would have eaten her, and half these other posers, for breakfast. And at lunchtime come back for the rest.
Frank-o watched them disappear into the fray, bashing the cheap, fragile corpo flat to pieces. Feck that, he swore, and legged it after the vanished three, down toward the canal.
They had gathered in the shade of the bankside elms, unconsciously choosing the darker places against the lightening summer sky. A drunken slapper, a stone overweight, babbled away oblivious of the way they had encircled her.
You ain't safely in any club, baby, Frank-o stoked, striding straight into their midst. The devious little bastard- Razor!- rejected the hoor and broke, kept breaking and breaking further into an ever-wider grin.
"Lads, yer man here's called Frank-o," Razor delighted. "Been one of Refik's favorite toys since before I even joined da club!"
Either pure anger or adrenaline fueled the elbow Frank-o threw into Razor's upper lip. His head snapped audibly back, and stolen blood began to cascade down the yellow raincoat.
Razor laughed. "Yih can see why, ih!"
Each of the rugger vamps, still warm to the touch, locked Frank-o's arms in fierce holds. He still managed to get in Razor's bloody face, as the dumb slapper bitch ran off screaming. "And where's Refik's sorry ass, now, Razor? Tell me that!"
When Razor's mirth cooled, he answered. "Refik? He's off settin' a trap for tose knackers tha' jumped us in Rathfernum. He'll be along, and right delighted to see ye, yih. He was sayin', tha' with a couple new captives, us tree here, Sophie and Farts off huntin' on Camden Street an' him, the six of us'd have the guts of a new and better nest--- without any more interferin' from any of tha' lot!" Razor grinned and grinned, absolutely delighted. He took Frank-o's defiant jaw in one sharp fist and smiled.
"Yih, he'll be chuffed tha' yer back in yer rightful place among us, too, Frank-o, ya daft feckin' muppet!"
* * *
Molly (Again)
In every dojo (legend says) there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the raincoats, the forces of darkness. She is the-
"Sprayer!" Molly cried, and Sean-o, thank God, appeared just in time. No-hands was now missing it all.
Molly had come in third place in the Nationals last year. That was something to be proud off: that was in adult competition. In all of the country, off all the adults who took it as their single-minded pursuit to master Tai Kwon Do, Molly had only been beaten once in the entire tournament. She had the ribbon, and (more memorably) the bruises to prove it. It was that Jenni O'Loughlin who had beaten her in the quarter-finals: that girl was a Tai Kwon monster. There should be a Jenni O'Loughlin league, by herself, and then an actual competition where everyone else battled it out for a little drama.
Molly side-stepped, then sent an outside circle kick to the back of the raincoat's head. He toppled, and Hammer planted him one to try and keep him down. Another was already in her face: this giant was stitched in, from head to toe. No matter. A quick combination to knock it off balance, make it raise its guard, and she was able to manage a quick whisk-whisk with the Stanley blade from her back pocket. Judo grab and roll- he popped right out of his coat like a sausage bursting open on the grill. Sean-o was right there, again. God bless Sean-o.
Yeah, Jenni O'Loughlin. Molly had fought her eight times, over the past few years. Only two times were in competition: twice, else, had been exhibitions and the other matches had been sparring, in times where one club or the other had traveled. It wasn't all that big a country. Molly always knew at least half of the people pictured in Martial Arts Ireland Monthly. Had fought most of those, too.
Where was Frank-o? Molly had time to notice. She noticed something else, too: the heavy stench of decay. Bogland. Muck giving up secrets better left unfound. Her fists lashed viciously at the next rugger. The last flat, last month, that had been bad. The raincoats found their nests in places where a great evil had been done. The stupid girl, out of sane mind from heroin pains, had given birth three months premature. She had abandoned it, and locked the bathroom door, watching spiders crawl out of the walls to ignore her father, until the raincoat nest had come to claim the place and all who inhabited it. Evil came to collect its own, and fester. The smell there- Father Miles had given the infant Christian rites, poor little lad.
Molly's fists and feet flew faster yet. Where was the good Padre, too, come to notice-?
It was better not to think, when fighting. Later, with friends around-
But something here....
"Molly!" screamed Dee, finally breaking through to her consciousness. "The smell! Gas!"
Miss Decisive again. Action! "Everyone- clear out! It's a trap!"
She bashed the rugger in the guts time and time again, using his fullback bulk as a shield for her friends to flee. There were a whole squad of them, she saw. Big bastards, still reeking lager. Maybe later she would consider the gang-rape or other crime they had celebrated, this very night down some darkened corner, when the teeth and claws had come to claim their own. But no: not now. As Amigo ducked out the door, two more swooped to block the way. Molly, judging quick, mule-kicked her opponent into his brethren and grabbed Ais by the arm. The last two alive, they raced through the rancid flat and shouldered into the kitchen. There Molly caught a glimpse of something that she did not want to see, and then they were diving through the back door.
Ais threw her shoulder against its cracked wood, an involuntary scream piercing Molly's ear when the pair saw they were not alone in the filthy black breezeway. "I told you, that I would soon add you to my coven!" grated a wicked voice, and horrific close laughter struck up simultaneous with a greasy orange match.
* * *
Frank-o (Again)
McHugh had produced a razor blade, once. They all sat Indian-style in her bedroom, when her parents were out. "Pain is a stupid part of most people's life. Most people spend each of their days, trying not to get hurt," she had begun, when the curtains were drawn and the black candles taken out from hiding deep in her closet. The tarot cards were laid out to show the anchor, the blind man, death, coitus, the chancer. "We are smarter," she'd spoken, mismatched eyes staring down each of theirs. "If we make a friend of Pain, we will have nothing to fear from him."
Frank-o had been nervous, but without reason. Razors are too thin to hurt at all. McHugh tie-dyed a pair of her panties with blood from her bared shoulder. Frank-o popped wood from that, that and the thin scars along her smooth forearm. Challenge came to him in turn, and he was the first not to cringe and pass the blade along. He angered himself with all the pain inside, and then the quick swipe away from the back of his calf. Blood appeared. The wound didn't hurt a bit. Not like slamming his pinky in the bathroom door, by accident. He wore a cut almost a half-inch long, and the sensation didn't bother him.
McHugh smiled her hot approval. "Yes, that's the way!" she glowed. "Pain is now your friend, like mine!"
Paramedics, off of Casualty, or parents or doctors, would have definitely said he needed a stitch in that. Frank-o just let it bleed, let others follow his example, and let Elisabeth McHugh, above her tarot cards, shine with passion.
She was just a wicked child, Frank-o realized only now. A child enjoying her power to make others hurt themselves. All her dark, silent secrets: a game, nothing more....
As Razor tightened the grip on his chin, Frank-o just showed that he had teeth, too.
He threw his weight this way, then that. Agitated, he wrestled his arms from the slack rugger's grips, in a child's tantrum. "I hate- hate!- that fecker Refik!" Frank-o screamed. He stomped the ground. "I ever see him again, gonna crush his eyes!"
Razor was only delighted until Frank-o planted his jackboot in first one, then the other rugger, stomping just like climbing stairs. Launching off the second, he snapped his heel, hard, across Razor's bloody jaw. All four of them were down in the grass, by the canal's side. Frank-o dug his thumbs deep into the soft spot below Razor's adam's apple, a roar of rage left over from the tantrum bursting from him. Pure rage, or some other supernatural energy: Frank-o spun his captive off the earth, using Razor's flying boots to club the two ruggers into black water. Hoors- real hoors- cheered from across the way, excited.
Razor, the bastard, rolled to his feet, coattails flying. "Wha'-!" the inner-city scummer roared. But over his shoulder, alone ten feet away, Frank-o saw that arthritic old priest standing stock still with his arms extended out. What a brave action, standing open, so close, Frank-o realized, music suddenly surging up through his veins.
"Mo my momma momma mo my mother--- I would love to 'love' you, brother--!" Frank-o demanded in a chant. They brought it on. And for five long minutes, three vampires against sixteen years of wrath, it blasted.
Then---
"Stop!" Razor commanded. Fists hung in midair: the vampire reveled, at attention's center as he regained his balance.
Sirens racing toward the mayhem scene drowned out the birdsong of the predawn hush. They went rising, falling, rising, falling.
"I jes' loves tha' sound," Razor explained, eyes mad with savage delight, before roaring out a fresh shriek and descending with fist, tooth, and claw.
"The canal!" Frank-o gasped, strength failing, as he knocked the clumsy ruggers back into each other. "The feckin' canal- Christ's sake!"
Strength failing, Frank-o fended Razor's relentless rush and desperately hoped that old Padre understood. Refinement gone, the short little punk-ass charged, arms grasping to catch him around the middle, force him down. He tottered on the sloping verge, lungs afire from stolen gasps. Frank-o clasped Razor's iron arm and twisted with might from feck knew where. He toppled his collapsing weight into the throw, and it was Razor who went splashing. The ruggers charged, like Frank-o's head for a ball. It was all he could do it skip aside and fall out of their way.
And there was old Padre Miles, gibbering in his cracking old man's voice. Latin, Frank-o guessed. He followed Miles' path, too tired to regain his knees. And, suddenly, rather than three monsters surging from loch ness, Frank-o could see only the hoors and johns and miscellaneous four A.M. passersby celebrating across the flat water of the Grand Canal.
He was carried again, must have blacked out just like during the fight in Rathfarnham. The old priest rejoiced, for the seventh or twelfth time, lifting from him all undue anxiety. "The canal, my son, you were absolutely right! I blessed the whole canal into Holy Water, from lock to foam-lipped lock!"
And Frank-o's consciousness, again, must have passed over like his crisis.
* * *
Molly (The End)
The explosion blasted the back door from its hinges, smacking its passenger Aisling swiftly against the far brick wall. Flames flashed the glass from the half-open window: had this Refik been human, able to be harmed by normal, physical means, his leering face would be slashed, shredded. The gloating grin alone hung like something detached from any mortal face.
"You have given me the best night's fun in many a long decade," the master oozed. He stepped forward, and Molly took an involuntary step back.
The inferno scorched her like the fires of rising Hell. Who was this, that flattened her so easily, earlier? That had collected a whole new nest, in the space of a few hunted hours? That used powers to manipulate normal, mortal men into a mob against them, and had at his bidding untraditional weapons like guns and explosives? The towering Refik savored another step forward, pushing Molly deeper into the scalding heat from the burning flat. She couldn't think-
Ais, weakly, crumpled behind her shattered door, began to pray aloud for support. This caused Refik to blast gales of bovine laughter. "You fools!" it swore. "I am Refik Ibn Muhammad Al-Juhani. You infidel Heretics! Your savior is nothing to me..." Molly heard, aghast, Ais's Nicean Creed die out. Refik roared: "I impaled Christians for the Ottoman Mamturk in 1804, have delighted ever since..."
But, alone and burning, the warrior found strength within herself to take up the prayer. "...the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth....
"...Of all that is," Molly declared aloud. "Seen- and unseen-"
With a Jenni O'Loughlain cry, she leapt forward, drawing the pocket Testament and thumping it squarely onto Refik's firelit forehead. The Book passed straight through, as if past so much air. And when she crumpled, exhausted, that was all that lay before her in the filthy breezeway. Hot air, and a tattered rubber raincoat, smoldering the decay.
"But I feared-" Aisling confessed, confused, as Molly dragged her to safety, "I thought, there, that a Bible wouldn't have any effect on a Muslim vampire. I mean, maybe a crescent moon or Koran or something that it found Holy-?"
"No," answered Molly, with conviction she had though beyond her strength. "That Refik had attacked us throughout with all manner of un-traditional weapons. I saw, it was just attacking us again in a new way.... Attacking our faith."
Ais flopped onto her own two feet, staggering with her friend down toward the light. She blinked. "Golly!"
* * *
Frank-o
Dawn hung the color of eggnog, spilled across the sky.
"Thank God- bread rolls royce!" the Sean-o fellow celebrated. "Kylemore Bakery should just be opening." Sean-o turned his two palms to Frank-o. Frank-o gave them double-fives, then got double-fives back.
Relief and revelry! Frank-o linked his death's head tattooed arm in arm with the carrotbread and the kiwi. They all staggered arm in arm from exhaustion as much as sweet victory.
Sean-o put on Refik's voice: "Your savior is nothing to me.... I impaled Christians in 1804..."
When he could make himself heard again, over everyone's laughter, Frank-o slapped friendly Sean-o and maybe-not-so-bad Molly good-natured on their backs. "Hey... you all want to hear a really funny voice?"
"Yeah, lay it on us!" Ais exclaimed.
So Frank-o gave New Zealand a swift knee to the pills. "Oh, sweet Jesus-!" the lad screamed, sounding very like a lady.
"What?" Frank-o asked, when he saw no one else was laughing. Everyone had been rolling in the weeds, howling, after McHugh had pulled the joke off on Ronan.
The edge of the summer sun topped the Georgian houses east, on Haddington Road, disintegrating Frank-o in less than a tenth of a second.
* * *
Camera Two: Long View
"So... Frank-o was a raincoat?"
"Well, he did receive a staggering blow on the head, in the melee of that abandoned house in Rathfarnham," reasoned Father Miles.
"Had amnesia from the shot," quipped an English accent, as Sledgehammer readjusted his tools across either shoulder. "Musta roight forgot he was a vamp, and not a victim."
Sean-o scraped together a little pile of dust with the side of his shoe.
"Explains why he was such a jerk," New Zealand winced, in close to his normal voice.
The lads groaned in sympathy as the chicks tittered. Linking arms once again, Ais agreed, "Yeah, he was a real jerk-o butt."
"Huh! I guess we should have seen, all along," reflected Molly. "Does explain how he knew their haunts and ways, and why he could barely stand to look at good Father Miles...."
"Well, then-" Sledgehammer concluding, kicking his big English boot through the Frank-o pile.
The heavenly cafe awaited. Tables enough for twice twenty. Strong coffee, clean plates, clinking cutlery. Work done with a long and sunny day stretching before, steam curling like spirits, sweet aroma of fresh bread.
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